The present invention relates to register management, and more specifically to finding a free bit in a register efficiently.
Conventional methods employ a Round Robin approach to find an empty bit in a register. For a three bit register, for example, one conventional method first starts at bit 0, and decides which is the next free bit, bit 0, bit 1, or bit 2. The method then starts at bit 1, and decides which is the next free bit, bit 1, bit 2 or bit 0. Finally, bit 2 is regarded as the starting bit, and it is decided which is the next free bit, bit 2, bit 0, or bit 1. As the number of bits of a register increases, the processing time and the number of gates and method steps needed for the conventional method increase dramatically, even when the starting bit is known.
It would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus for more efficiently locating the next free bit in a register.